Ivybridge Community College

Year 7 Geography Students Explore Dartmoor

Year 7 students explore Dartmoor as part of the Geography curriculum. Faith Street (7STB) reports.

From Tuesday, 6 to Friday, 9 June, Year 7 students had the opportunity to go to and see different areas of Dartmoor. We used our geographical knowledge from the classroom and transferred it to the Devon countryside to develop our understanding about geography. On our journey, we stopped at Merrivale Quarry and we used our knowledge on settlements and rebuilding cities to think about what we could do to the Quarry to make it a natural attraction again. We thought that the old area could become a leisure park or something that would encourage people to love the outdoors. Whilst we were there, we also used other skills to do a traffic count, which we are following up in our classes.

During our day at Dartmoor, we went to the old and beautiful village of Princetown. Whilst at Princetown, we did an environmental quality survey, deciding whether the village is old or new, beautiful or ugly, abandoned or well cared for and thought about the landscape. We also took a short walk to an area of Princetown that serves as a campsite in the summer, where we looked over Princetown to identify the different buildings.

Our final stop was at Sharpitor, where we examined granite rock and learnt how this granite had formed. Over millions of years the magma turned into granite and pushed its way out of the earth. Erosion then exposed the granite to create the boggy and rocky landscape that we walked on! All the time we were at Dartmoor, we had loads of fun with our friends and learnt lots more about the environment in which we live in. The views were beautiful and it was a very interesting trip!